


The Sum of Our Best and Worst

by lizfu



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Angst and Feels, Discussion of Abortion, F/F, F/M, Heartache, Kate Bishop - Freeform, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Single Parent Clint, alpha!Phil, alpha/beta/omega, mpreg - implied, omega!Clint, teen pregnancy - implied
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:54:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6032298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizfu/pseuds/lizfu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's done a damn fine job raising Kate on his own, no matter what other parents say about single omega households.  But Kate has questions that Clint's not sure how to answer (if he should even answer them), along with a cunning mind, tenacity, and a perchance for surrounding herself with very resourceful friends - none which came from the Barton side of her incomplete family tree. Armed with an old leather jacket hidden (lovingly) in the attic, an ancient yearbook, and a faded photograph of a bad boy teenage heart throb, Kate will get her answers.</p><p>Or: A Small Town AU about fathers and daughters, old lovers, and homecomings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sum of Our Best and Worst

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Angst, heartache, overblown teenage drama, and other various kicks to your feels. I didn't mean to play so dirty with your feelings.
> 
> I really just wanted to write an ABO fic about single-parent households. Plus, sweet small town romances and homecomings. And bad boy teenage Phil Coulson with his cool hair, his cigarettes and apathy, and a really fucking awesome leather jacket. This is a mostly 616-inspired mashup with MCU to fill in spaces.
> 
> This story is un-beta'd, but obsessively revised. If you see a mistake, feel free to point it out. Same goes for additional tags.
> 
> The chapter title is taken from [the demo version of Songs: Ohia's "The Big Game is Every Night"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snUHUm5gNpk).

"You have to tell him," Natasha says after a long contemplative moment sipping her froufy coffee drink while Clint fidgeted across from her.

Clint still fidgets, his orange-cranberry-something scone now in chunks on the coffee house's thick green china, not a single bite taken. He isn't sure why he ordered it, aside from it had sounded good at the time, but as the truth poured out of him under Nat's scrutiny, the idea of the scone become less appetizing, more nauseating, the phantom taste of it turning his stomach. It's now something for his fingers to tear and crumble while he worries. Natasha tuts softly - at him, at his blatant waste, who knows?

He sighs, dropping a piece. "I know," he says like those words are as heavy as the weight in his gut. "I just...." He huffs angrily and looks away, his jaw clenched tightly with the words he now has difficulty saying. "I need more time," he decides on. "I, I have time, right? Before, before this," he gestures vaguely, his hands flailing more than indicating, "becomes a problem."

Nat hums softly under her breath. "I know you, Barton. If you put it off now, you'll keep putting it off, and he won't know until you show up, in trouble, or Barney comes for his head. By that point, it will probably be the end of summer, when we're supposed to start our senior year and he...." She frowns softly. "Does whatever he's planning on doing."

"He hasn't told me," Clint confesses with a moan. His eyes drop to the remains of the scone littering his plate, crumbs spilling over onto the table. "We don't talk about after summer. We're don't even talk about us. I don't even know if there's _going_ to be an us after summer." 

"You picked a real keeper," Nat notes drily. "Anybody else treated you like this, I'd tell you to leave them, they're using you."

His eyes shoot up. "You think he's using me?"

Nat shrugs, then drains the rest of her espresso hell concoction. "I think he has a lot of shit going on that he doesn't want to confront right now, and you're happy to be his distraction, no questions asked because you're afraid of answers."

"Fuck you, Anne Landers. What do you know?"

"Only what I hear, which isn't a lot. His mom's in the hospital. Sounds serious."

Clint scowls at this, at himself, feeling like a chump. "That's....that's more than what I hear these days."

"Charming. Seems to me you both are each other's dirty little secret."

A protest springs half-formed on Clint's lips, and halts under the pointed look Nat gives him, swallowed thickly with the sense of humility that comes from Natasha Romanov examining his bad life choices. Yeah, he'll give her that one, no fight. "We used to talk," he murmurs instead to the pile of crumbs, but he feels pathetic saying it. "Sorta. Um, y’know, like dirty talk." A small smile touches his lips, but he doesn't feel anything resembling amusement. 

"That's not talking," she points out. 

"No," he admits, shoulders slumping. "We kinda danced around each other."

"Kinda," she huffs and shakes her head. "So here we are. You can't not tell him, Clint. It wouldn't be fair to either of you."

"Or," he begins slowly, "he never needs to know. I could go somewhere, take care of it myself, and come back like nothing ever happened."

Of all the things he’s told her today, this makes her pause - like, really pause. No intentionally long moments between talking that put Clint on edge until he cracks. No silences for dramatic effect when Clint knows she knows what to say but won't say it until exactly the right moment. Clint can't tell if she's surprised, supportive, or objective. Natasha plays her emotions close to her chest, only showing what she wants to show. It's better than Clint with his sloppy heart gushing on his sleeve. 

He watches her watch him, a million anxieties racing through his mind, no doubt playing over his face in every little shift and twitch that Nat can read. Their silence is dense, hanging around them like the thick curtain on the stage in the school auditorium. On the other side, Clint can hear the din of the coffeehouse muffled through his own shit hearing: the chatter between other customers in their own worlds, their own conversations; the whir and whoosh of the machines behind the counter. A barista calls out something complicated and a name, and Clint squirms.

"Closest place is in the city," Natasha tells him, her words carefully measured. "I can borrow James’ car some time - he owes me and he won’t ask questions. Tell Jacques we’re taking a day trip or something. I’ll take you - if that's what you really want to do."

"I..." Clint slips down onto the table, nearly planting face first on his plate of crumbs. "Fuck,” he groans softly. “I don't have money. And I need a legal guardian or something, don’t I? They'll ask questions. Jacques'll be pissed."

He can feel something inside of him break, as the hopelessness of his situation slams into him. A tear loosens and rolls down his cheek. "I'm so fucked, Nat." He chuckles wetly and rubs the tears hard with the heel of his palm. "In so many ways."

Nat pricks an eyebrow, a smirk tugging at a corner of her lips. "Hope the figurative part was good."

Clint snorts. "Best I've ever had."

"Pretty sure you've only had him."

All the humor falls from Clint's face. "Yeah….” 

"You have me," Natasha says after a beat. "I'm with you, whatever you decide to do."

A new wetness blurs his vision, slipping down his cheeks. He doesn't bother scrubbing it away. "Even if I don't do anything?"

"Not doing anything is still doing something," she points out. 

Clint leans back in his chair and looks up - for guidance, for the patience to deal with all this shit, for the weird design the plaster makes, he's not sure why. His hands smooth over his shirt, tugging it down across his belly, where they come to rest. "I'm too young for this," he admits.

"So am I," Natasha says across from him. "So's Phil. Tell him. He's not the one making a decision, but he still needs to know." 

His thumbs rub idly across his t-shirt and he hums. "Cos it's the adult thing to do, right?" 

"No," she replies. “It's the decent thing.”

 

\--

 

It takes Clint a couple hours of meandering the long way home and trying not to think about calling Phil before he says “Fuck it,” and actually calls Phil. 

Who isn't even home. 

Between the space of Phil’s mom politely telling him no one is there to take his call and the beep, Clint waffles between just hanging up and trying later (never) and being the decent person Nat wants him to be by leaving a message. The part that doesn’t want to stare down Natasha’s disappointment at his whole existence wins out in the end. (It usually does.) 

"Hey,” he tells the machine like his heart isn't pounding in his chest and through his ears, “haven't seen you in a while. Just thought I'd say hi. Um, listen. Meet me at the bleachers - the ones at the baseball diamond, not the football field - around 9-ish. I have a thing I want to talk to you about."

He hangs up not feeling better but not feeling worse. He just hopes a nurse will kick Phil out of the hospital this evening, so he’ll actually get the message.

Clint spends the rest of the day faking it like he’s going to make it, roaming from room to room to hide how much he wants to run and keep running until he doesn’t have to run anymore. (Natasha would hunt him down.) He somehow makes it through the noon hour before his foster dad, Jacques, notices his aimless shuffle, which interrupts his own hustle to get ready for a meeting or drinks or something with the other coaches at the high school. “Get out of the house!” he tells Clint when Clint says he’s bored. “The lawn needs mowed if you need something to do.”

Clint hates mowing, but it’s something to keep him from wondering to tonight and Phil and whether he should break into Phil’s house to delete the message. The pusher mower is an ancient beast that guzzles gas and fights Clint the whole time as he tries to keep his rows straight and even. A cool breeze makes the struggle more bearable; Clint feels too self-conscious to take off his shirt, that the neighbors would suddenly just know and blab to Jacques. He’s not ready to talk to Jacques yet, but it’s on the list somewhere after Phil. Eventually. 

The chore gnaws away only an hour, leaving the rest of the day to fuss and worry until he does something stupid like stand up Phil or find him at the hospital to talk. Clint notices that the bushes beside the house look a little wild, and retrieves the shears from the tool shed (detouring half an hour to tidy up the mess). After the bushes are trimmed back, he moves on to the small garden Jacques tries to keep up whenever he remembers it; thistles and dandelions poke up among the beds of perennials, and crab grass threatens to overrun the spaces in between. It’s not Better Homes and Gardens good when Clint finishes, but it looks less like scrubland. From there, he washes the windows, dusts all the furniture and Jacques’ old fencing trophies and medals, and vacuums.

Barney calls just as Clint starts on the kitchen. His brother is thankfully gone most of the year, opting to live hours away in a college town even when classes aren’t in session. He’s no longer Jacques’ legal responsibility, but the offer to come back is always on the table. Not for the first time, Clint’s thankful Barney hardly makes the drive to visit; his brother has a knack for sniffing out the truth - or Clint just can’t keep up the lie. Where Natasha silently judges him, Barney’s grudges escalate to DEFCON One.

Clint’s greeting barely makes it past his lips when Barney launches into the long rambling update. He talks a mile a minute jumping from his criminal justice classes to bars and parties and other trappings of college life to the sweet beta he's just started seeing but isn’t dating because he’s not sure about a relationship just yet. Clint can only hold on and listen and brace himself with the occasional hum and grunt, while he wipes down the counters. He knows what’s coming, because conversations with his alpha brother always devolve into invasive questions about his lovelife and lectures about not putting out - like Clint has a virtue after all Clint’s girlfriends that exist solely in his brother’s mind. Barney’s views are a complicated mess of traditional alpha, double standards, and well-meaning doting brother. Clint tries not to bang his head against the cabinet.

"I'm not seeing anyone," Clint insists - a little too hard. Barney laughs.

“Hey, man, I get it,” he says with a genuineness that makes Clint want to believe that he has a brother he can tell anything. “No need to be cagey. If you got a thing you wanna keep on the down low, I can keep it on the down low. Is it that beta chick, Bobbi? I remember you mooning over Bobbi.”

In that moment, Clint has a vision of his own dismal future: Thanksgiving dinner and the epic screaming match that will only end in Barney barging out of the house, that destructive Barton temper - passed down like a bad gene - fueling his hunt for Phil Coulson, wherever he may be. (Not with Clint, obviously.) 

“That was the eighth grade,” he grouses. “And I did not moon over Bobbi. I just thought she was kinda cute. You’re the one who tried to fix me up with her. Which, she thought you were some high school perv hitting on her and I had to tell her you were just some weirdo matchmaker. So thanks for that.”

“But you are seeing someone. I can tell.”

Clint sighs a little too hard. “There’s no one, Barn. And you can’t tell. You do not have mystical older brother psychic abilities. That’s not even a thing!” 

“One, it’s totally a thing, and two, there is somebody. You get all defensive and lose it on me when you’re into somebody. As I said, cool, whatever. Just bring ‘em around next time I’m in town,” (Clint blanches and leans against the fridge.) “so I can give them the alpha brother shovel talk if I like them.” Barney laughs like it’s only a joke.

The afternoon rolls into evening with Clint in the backyard, shooting arrow after arrow down the range that Jacques set up for him when archery became a sport instead of a thing he did because Coach Chisholm needed an extra body to keep the club going. The mindful repetition keeps him from thinking about anything (Barney) except hitting the target, grouping his arrows so tight, he manages to Robin Hood a couple of them. He stops once Jacques calls him from the patio, back from his meeting/maybe beer thing with two pizzas and breadsticks. Jacques seems happy with the house, enough to overlook how Clint’s devoured most of the pizzas, or at least not comment on it. If satisfaction curls inside of Clint when Jacques thanks him for all the work he’s done today, Clint blames it on his stupid omega hormones. 

"I'm going out," he tells Jacques around 8:30, cashing in the good will he's built up. Jacques doesn’t say anything beyond an affirmative grunt over a stack of papers that holds his complete attention. He doesn’t even ask where he’s going, that’s how much he trusts Clint. It makes Clint feel like a shittier person than he’s pretty sure that he already is, so he adds, “I’ll be home by 11:30,” in hopes that it will somehow soothe the guilt.

(It doesn’t.)

\--

There's a constant breeze making the night chilly for early June. Or Clint's body is fucking with him, as it's been fucking with him for the past week and a half with mood swings and nausea and weird temperature fluctuations that have him throwing on anything thick and warm even in the early summer heat. He pulls on a jacket before leaving - Phil's, offered and forgotten sometime weeks ago. It's one of the most beautiful jackets Clint's ever seen: real leather, black with a rough texture and faded edges and wear-and-tear of age and a history Clint can’t bring himself to ask about. It zips at an angle, causing everything to pop out like Phil’s displaying all its buttons and logos that adorn the wide lapels and flared collar. Clint sinks under its weight and warmth, breathing in a lungful of Phil's lingering scent, his unique alpha musk laced with cigarettes and the pomade Phil uses to style his hair. 

_Alpha_ , something whispers in the primitive part of Clint's mind. His lower anatomy tingles.

Nine o'clock finds Clint huddled on the empty bleachers, looking out over the empty baseball diamond. He used to play until he presented. Even with suppressants from Omega Services (ha), the school admin is still wary of the scandal mixed teams invite and afraid of the responses omegas might invoke from alpha teammates. There are a few omega teams, but not one for baseball. Not enough interest. Clint likes archery better - it might help him earn a scholarship to the universities he and Natasha are (well, were) looking at - but he misses the dynamics of a baseball team, the way players worked in tandem.

Nine-thirty and Clint wonders if maybe Phil hasn't been home yet. Would visiting hours apply to Phil, his mother's only family? Clint can't remember. He hasn't been to a hospital since he was a kid; his memory is vague and filled with an awful, impenetrable silence. 

At ten o'clock, Clint is still alone. Fifteen minutes, he tells himself. Fifteen minutes, then he'll leave and drop by Phil's house tomorrow morning, hopefully catching him when he returns for a shower or clean clothes. Yeah, it will be shitty to drop this on him when he's in a hurry, but Natasha is right: Phil needs to know sooner, when they can talk about options, rather than later, when there's only one option left.

Eleven o'clock, and did Phil even go home? He might be avoiding Clint. They haven't spoken for a couple weeks, but, then, they never really spoke outside of the private moments of whatever it was they were doing. A relationship, his mind supplies in a voice that sounds suspiciously like Natasha's. Relationships are more concrete, more committed. Clint never asked for Phil's commitment, or even his fidelity; he's positive that Phil would have never asked the same of him, either.

"Hey, Barton." The voice comes from behind Clint, the familiar timbre sending a stupid wave of happiness through Clint's body. Phil rounds the corner seconds later, sliding onto the cold metal bleachers beside Clint, close but not touching. The heat he gives off is as delicious as the scent; it takes so much of Clint's self control not to bury his face in Phil's neck and breathe deeply like a creeper.

"Hey, Coulson," he returns instead, gripping the leather jacket tighter around him.

It's a quarter to midnight - not that it matters.

The silence between them stretches for minutes, Clint unsure how to preface what he needs to tell Phil, and Phil....

Clint looks at him - really looks at him. His eyes are smudged with sleepless shadows, and his skin paler than Clint remembers, faint freckles popping out even under the dim light of the crescent moon. His cheeks are thinner; if Clint reached out, he would be able to trace cheekbones and the chords of Phil's neck. 

"You look like shit," he tells Phil.

"I feel like shit," Phil confirms. 

The night fills the space left by their silence: the frantic baying of a dog, the taptaptap of a cord clanging against the flagpole, chirping crickets under the bleachers. A car passes on the road beside the field, music blasting until it dies in the growing distance with its cherry red taillights Clint watches. He licks his lips, unsure where this conversation should go next, how he should act. He never knows how he should act around Phil.

"I've been out all day," Phil says, supplying the next mile or so in their conversation.

"Yeah? Heard about your mom from Nat." He tries for casual, even picking at the zipper on one of the cuffs as he looks anywhere but Phil's direction. "Tough break, man."

"Yeah, it's cancer - um, pancreatic. She's been in treatment since last year, but….” Phil trails off. Clint hears the click-click-click of a lighter followed a few long seconds later by a long, breathy drag and an exhale that sounds more like release. He wrinkles his nose at the too-sweet smell of Phil's cigarette, the live scent making his stomach turn over on itself. He swallows the urge to gag. Phil doesn't seem to notice. 

"End of summer," he continues. There's a waver in his voice. Clint’s eyes shoot back to him. Phil's somewhere else, though, his eyes on the outfield. His cigarette hangs precariously on the tips of his fingers, burning down. "That's how long they're giving her. October, if she's lucky."

"Shit."

Phil shrugs - fucking shrugs - like it's nothing. "Not much we can do but wait,” he says hollowly. “I'm there everyday. Only really come home to shower, try to get a couple hours of sleep."

The conversation dies off again, leaving nothing but those night sounds. Clint doesn’t know how to handle this. He had only met Phil’s mom - “Kate,” she had insisted - a handful of times, completely on accident when he snuck out of Phil’s house. He knows death, though; his own mother had died in the mangle wreck of his father’s car before she could be pulled out. No lingering, no fading, no prolonged suffering. The grief is all the same. Suddenly, Clint’s problem is less significant, a little selfish that it had been this morning when Natasha insisted he tell Phil. Clint's never given a damn for propriety, more than a little proud to toe the line, but telling Phil now would be inappropriate, another bum deal in a long line of bum deals that comprise what little Clint knows about Phil's life.

Beside him, Phil takes another drag of his cigarette, now mostly burned down, before letting it fall to the ground. He rubs it out with his boot. "I'm leaving this fucking town," he declares, pushing himself off the bleachers. "I’m joining the Army as soon as all this shit’s over. There's nothing for me here."

Clint's stomach falls at a thought: _I'm just going to hold him back._ "Yeah?" he manages around the lump in his throat. 

Phil says nothing for a while, staring into the distance again with eyes that Clint realizes are looking beyond the outfield into nothing. "Yeah."

"Guess I should give back your jacket, then." Inwardly he groans. _Clint Barton, you dummy._

Phil turns back to him and looks at him - really looks at him in a way he hasn't since a day in late April, when Clint called him over, lonely and scared and- The wide shock in his blue, so blue eyes passes back into apathy so fast that Clint nearly wonders if it was a trick of the midnight moon. A moment later, Phil huffs, a smirk quirking the corners of his lips. His eyes flick over Clint, taking in his huddled body in a way that makes Clint want to lean back against the bleachers and give him an eyeful. 

"Keep it," he tells him. "You look like you need it, Barton."

"Fuck you, Coulson. It's midnight, and I've been waiting here all night." He lets his annoyance slip through before he can snatch it back and reply with something more blase. Fucking hormones.

Phil's hands shoot up, palms out and placating. "Oh, right. Forgot - you wanted to talk or something."

Clint shrugs. "'s'not important."

"I'm not going to be around much longer. You got something to say, Clint?"

His heart leaps at his name. Phil doesn't say his name, not usually. During sex, yes, but it doesn't really mean anything because it's sex and Clint says stupid stuff all the time, like _That feels good_ or _God, I love your cock_ or _Fuck the condom, we don’t need it_. (He really regrets that last one.)

Clint uncurls his body, stretching his limbs and yawning like the casual fucker he wants Phil to think he is. Nothing's wrong. "Hadn't seen you in weeks. Thought you might need to fuck around a bit after Nat told me about your mom in the hospital."

The look Phil gives him is amused. "I'm honestly beat. Don't know how long I'd last to make it worth your while."

Clint reaches out, snagging the belt loops of Phil’s jeans, reeling him in. He smiles coyly as Phil rolls his eyes. His heart hammers in his chest. He can do this. He can play this role. It's like Natasha had said earlier about distractions; Clint can be that. "You're leaving - you said - and I'm stuck here another year. Could be the last time we see each other." He presses a kiss to Phil's stomach, his cold fingers plundering the layers of hoodie and t-shirt until he finds warm skin. He grins against him as Phil's hand cards through his hair, groaning at the feel of nails scratching his scalp. "One for the road," he drawls.

"You're insatiable." The hand falls away.

"You're -" _Irresistible. I'm so fucking gone for you._ "-leaving."

Phil hums. Clint feels the heavy press of Phil's face in his hair, and hears a sigh escape the alpha's lips. "You smell amazing," he says so softly. Clint wonders if he was meant to hear it, if it was a slip of Phil's tongue. It doesn't change the way his stomach flips in a pleasant way or how his cock is more than interested.

"We could do it on the pitcher's mound."

Phil barks out a laugh and pulls away, but not too far. Clint's fingers idly stroke his sides. "You're outrageous."

"Says the guy who fucked me against a wall at Stark's party."

Suddenly, the distance between them closes, Phil's face inches then centimeters, his warm breath puffing against Clint's lips. He can see the heavy lust in Phil's eyes, making the blue into black as they flick all over Clint, like he's searching. Clint's tongue slides over his suddenly dry lips. Phil zeroes in on the movement, watching with an open hunger that brings Clint back to late April. He dips down and to the side, his face brushing against Clint's as he noses his neck, breathing deeply in a way that tell Clint he's being scented. "You smell so fucking amazing," Phil whispers in his ear.

The smell of alpha - _this_ alpha - is thick and pungent and so right, a heady combination that makes Clint fucking swoon and whimper, as his cock twitches and his ass wet. He leans against Phil's shoulder, turning his face to run his tongue over the chord of his neck, tasting his alpha. "So," the word is heavy as he figures out how to work his mouth, "that's a yes to the pitcher's mound?"

 

\--

 

They do not fuck on the pitcher's mound. Clint would be disappointed, but Phil's bed is the warmer and more comfortable option that Clint can't really be disappointed with, especially when Phil pulls him close afterwards, lazily running his lips over the juncture of Clint's shoulder and neck, teeth grazing skin, drawing a pleasant moan from Clint. He considers Round Two, but Phil’s weight against him, arms and legs winding around him, tangling with his own limbs like Phil’s taking root - it’s too damn comfortable. Clint’s body relaxes against him, his own breaths becoming longer and deeper until he’s drifting off in a headspace more peaceful than he’s felt all week. Phil murmurs something, but Clint’s too far gone to make any sense of it.

Some time in the early hours before dawn, he opens his eyes and curses softly. He hadn't meant to stay. Clint slips out of Phil's limp arms, quietly picking his way in the dark, pulling on his clothes. The leather jacket is draped on the back of a chair - the only article of clothing treated with any reverence in their scramble out of their clothes. Clint considers it for a moment, stuck between leaving it behind like a goodbye or slipping it on, keeping it as a memento of all the bad choices that led Clint to now. It's cold outside the cocoon of Phil's covers, and the walk home is longer now. Phil had told him to keep it, that he wouldn't need it anymore. Something in Clint's chest twists, threatening to break and him along with it. Biting in the inside of his cheek, he shrugs the jacket over his shoulders, nosing the lining for Phil's scent. 

He can’t see him again; Phil might figure it out, what he needed to tell him tonight. Whatever Clint’s expecting, he doesn’t want this truth to hold Phil back, to keep him in this town when his eyes are elsewhere. “There’s nothing for me here,” Phil had said. 

He looks at Phil's bed, longing to crawl back in, press kisses to those parted lips, to say goodbye properly like a decent person. He doesn’t owe him the truth - no matter what Natasha insists - but he does owe some closure. 

Clint Barton is a fucking coward, though. 

He slips out of the bedroom, easing the door open as quietly as its hinges will allow, and creeps down the stairs in his socks, shoes in hand, wincing at every creak and groan of the floorboards. Once outside, he shoves his feet into his shoes, not bothering to lace them up, and walks away quickly, willing himself to keep his eyes forward, to not look back.


End file.
